The present invention relates to a printing device and in particular but not exclusively to a tape printing device for printing an image on a tape.
Known tape printing apparatus of the type with which the present invention is concerned are disclosed in EP-A-322918 and EP-A-322919 (Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha) and EP-A-267890 (Varitronic). The printers each include a printing device having a cassette receiving bay for receiving a cassette or tape holding case. In EP-A-267890, the tape holding case houses an ink ribbon and a substrate tape, the latter comprising an upper image receiving layer secured to a backing layer by an adhesive. In EP-A-322918 and EP-A322919, the tape holding case houses an ink ribbon, a transparent image receiving tape and a double sided adhesive tape which is secured at one of its adhesive coated sides to the image tape after printing and which has a backing layer peelable from its other adhesive coated side. With both these apparatus, the image transfer medium (ink ribbon) and the image receiving tape (substrate) are in the same cassette.
It has also been proposed by the present applicants in, for example, EP-A-578372 to house the ink ribbon and the substrate tape in separate cassettes.
In all of these cases, the image receiving tape passes in overlap with the ink ribbon to a print zone consisting of a fixed print head and a platen against which the print head can be pressed to cause an image to transfer from the ink ribbon to the image receiving tape. There are many ways of doing this, including dry lettering or dry film impression, but the most usual way currently is by thermal printing where the print head is heated and the heat causes ink from the ink ribbon to be transferred to the image receiving tape.
It is known to provide a tape printing device which allows the user to select the character size with which it is desired to print and the length of label required. This can result in a problem if the selected character size results in the label which would be printed being longer than the length of label selected by the user. This problem is addressed in EP-A-0628419, in which, if this problem occurs, an error message is displayed which indicates that printing is not possible. However it is not particularly clear to the user as to the reason for the failure of the printing attempt.
It is an aim of embodiments of the present invention to address this problem. It may be desirable to provide options for the user to deal with the problem. It may be further desirable to allow the user to monitor the length of characters compared to the selected label length during the process of creating a label.
According to a first aspect of the present invention there is provided a printing device for printing labels comprising: a display; user input means for inputting an image to be printed by the printing device and for selecting a required label length; and control means operable to determine the length of the image input via the user input means, and if the length of the image input is greater than the required label length, the control means is arranged to cause the display to display an error message indicating the difference between the length of the image and the required label length.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a printing device for printing labels comprising: a display; user input means for inputting an image to be printed by the printing device and for selecting a required label length; and control means operable to determine the length of the image input via the user input means, and if the length of the image input is greater than the required label length, the control means is arranged to cause the display to display an error message indicating the length of the input image.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a printing device for printing labels of a required length, comprising: a display; user input means for inputting an image to be printed by the printing device; and control means operable to determine the length of the image input via the user input means, and if the length of the image input is greater than the required label length, the control means is arranged to cause the display to display an error message indicating the difference between the length of the image and the required label length.
According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of printing labels using a printing device comprising the steps of : inputting an image to be printed by the printing device; displaying the image on a display; selecting a required label length; determining the length of the image input and if the length of the image input is greater than the required label length, causing the display to display an error message indicating the difference between the length of the image and the required label length.
According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of printing labels using a printing device, comprising the steps of: inputting an image to be printed by the printing device; displaying the image on a display; selecting a required label length; determining the length of the image input and if the length of the image input is greater than the required label length, causing the display to display an error message indicating the length of the input image.
According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of printing labels of a required length using a printing device, comprising the steps of: determining the required length; inputting an image to be printed by the printing device; displaying the image on a display; determining the length of the image input and if the length of the image input is greater than the required label length, causing the display to display an error message indicating the difference between the length of the image and the required label length.
For a better understanding of the present invention and as to how the same may be carried into effect, reference will now be made by way of example to the accompanying drawings.